Elswyth Thane

Williamsburg, Virginia, is once more the scene in this second book of Thane's series, but the time is now the 1860s. Some of the characters are the descendants of those in the first novel, Dawn’s Early Light, and Grandmother Day, who was 16 when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, is now 95. Once, she can remember, it was Massachusetts that was threatening to secede instead of South Carolina. And when she was a girl they never seemed to think much about Yankees, one way or the other. But when a Yankee comes to Williamsburg in the tense autumn of 1860 and red-haired Eden Day falls heels over head in love with him, her great grandmother takes the long view—besides, she likes him herself. The story moves from Williamsburg to Richmond to Washington and back again during the dreadful years between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. In addition to the fictitious characters, Jeb Stuart and General Lee, Pickett, Magruder, and Stonewall Jackson are all seen through the eyes of the men who followed them into battle. Like Dawn’s Early Light, Yankee Stranger is full of action and romance, but most importantly, it presents a vivid re-creation of a vanished world.

Mary, a New England history professor researching an obscure Civil War hero, unexpectedly meets a southern gentleman lawyer, who is afflicted with alcoholism and a demanding mother. Unwisely, she is as captivated by the live man as by her dead hero.

Biography of George Washington, based on letters, diaries, records and chronicles of colonial America, and with full co-operation of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, who made available family letters and materials hitherto unpublished.

Lovely Phoebe Sprague, of Williamsburg, Virginia, became engaged to her childhood sweetheart just before she set sail for England -- where she fell headlong in love with Captain Oliver Campion. But in 1902 a betrothal was almost as binding as marriage, and Phoebe, who meant to abide by her promise, changed her mind too late. There was nothing that either Phoebe or Oliver could do about it; separated initially, they were soon to be whirled apart by the tumultuous events of history itself. In telling this fascinating story of two great loves, Miss Thane presents the reader with a brilliant and crowded panorama of the carefree days in England and Europe before 1914.

Elswyth Thane is best known for her Williamsburg series, seven novels published between 1943 and 1957 that follow several generations of two families from the American Revolution to World War II. In Dawn’s Early Light, Colonial Williamsburg comes alive. The novel revolves around four major characters: the Aristrocratic St. John Sprague, who becomes George Washington’s aide; Regina Greensleeves, a Virginia beauty spoiled by a season in London; Julian Day, a young schoolmaster who arrives from England on the eve of the war and initially thinks of himself as a Tory; and Tibby Mawes, one of his less fortunate pupils, saddled with an alcoholic father and an indigent mother. We also see Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, Greene, Patrick Henry, Francis Marion, and the rest of that brilliant galaxy playing their roles not as historical figures but as men. We see de Kalb’s gallant death under a cavalry charge at Camden. We penetrate to the swamp-encircled camp which was Marion’s stronghold on the Peedee. We watch the cat-and-mouse game between Cornwallis and Lafayette, which ended in Cornwallis’s unlucky stand at Yorktown. Dawn’s Early Light is the human story behind our first war for liberty, and of the men and women loving and laughing through it to the dawn of a better world.

Set during WWII, Jefferson Day returns from tragedy in London to Williamsburg, Virginia, his ancestral home. This concludes the Williamsburg Novels and the story of the Day, Sprague and Campion families.